It’s Monday night and a new week here at BCB After Dark: the coolest club for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. Come on in and chill with us for a while. There’s no cover charge. The vibe is friendly. Let us know if you need anything. THe hostess will seat you now. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
The Cubs lost to the Phillies tonight, 4-3 in 11 innings. I don’t know. I missed the first half of this game with family obligations but I saw the bitter conclusion and I’m bitter about it.
Also, Shōta Imanaga threw two innings for the ACL Cubs tonight as they beat the Rockies 4-1. Imanaga allowed just one hit and no runs. He struck out four and walked no one. So that’s good news.
Last week I asked you which Cub player, other than Pete Crow-Armstrong, is most worthy of starting in the All-Star Game? Forty-one percent of you think Seiya Suzuki should be starting in Atlanta and 37 percent of you said Kyle Tucker should get the nod.
Here’s the part where we listen to music and talk movies. You can skip that if you want. You won’t hurt my feelings.
We lost the great Sly Stone tonight at the age of 82. Sly & The Family Stone were truly one of the greatest and most influential pop groups of all time. Sly was a musical polyglot, skilled at rock, soul, jazz, gospel and other musical forms. He first gained fame in the Bay Area as a DJ who mixed the station’s soul format with popular music from all genres. He also served as the producer for such Bay Area bands as the Beau Brummels and The Great Society, Grace Slick’s first group.
He went on to form Sly & the Family Stone, whose influence can’t be overstated. It’s hard to imagine Prince, Michael Jackson or Marvin Gaye’s post-1970 stuff without hearing the influence of Sly & the Family Stone in it. And of course the group’s bassist, Larry Graham, is Drake’s uncle. Sly also insisted upon the band having both Black and white members to portray an image of unity at a time of racial upheaval, despite being attacked by both sides for it. His song “Everyday People” is one of the best calls for tolerance ever written.
I bought and read Stone’s autobiography Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) in 2023 when it came out. I bought the Barnes & Noble signed copy, so in my bedroom I’ve got Sly’s signature. The book is worth reading, even if Sly’s struggle with addiction is not the most pleasant topic.
Anyway, here organist Dr. Lonnie Smith doing a jazz version of one of Sly’s biggest hits, “Stand!”
Shock Corridor (1963) is one part a trashy, low-budget exploitation film and one part biting social satire of Cold War America. Directed, written and produced by Samuel Fuller, the film was met with general disgust when it was released but is now correctly considered a cult classic. It’s even been added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
The film stars Peter Breck as Johnny Barrett, an ambitious reporter who wants to go undercover at a mental institution to find out who committed a murder there. He does this out of no sense of justice or desire for the truth, but rather because he thinks this is his ticket to the Pulitzer Prize. While the idea is clearly borrowed form Nellie Bly’s famous 1887 excursion to a mental ward, the motivation here is entirely selfish. Fuller had been a crime reporter early in his life and held a very cynical view of journalism.
Constance Towers plays his stripper girlfriend Cathy, and Johnny’s plan is for Cathy to pretend to be his sister and for him to pretend to be obsessed with incestuous thoughts and actions about his sister. So yeah, this is the first clue this film isn’t taking the high road. Cathy thinks this idea is crazy (heh), but she goes along with it because Johnny insists.
Once inside, Johnny discovers the asylum is a nightmare of violence and cruelty. You want to say that Fuller exaggerates the primitive sadism of mental hospitals, but the stuff that came out about these places later in the decade would indicate that he was more spot on than you might think. Still, Fuller’s target wasn’t this nation’s system of mental health but rather society as a whole.
Here’s where the clever social satire comes in. Johnny identifies three patients as the keys to unlocking the case of who committed the murder, but each patient is representative of a major issue of Cold War America. There’s a man (James Best) who thinks he’s Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart, but he’s actually a brainwashed Korean War P.O.W. who has been shunned by everyone for treason. Then there’s Trent (Hari Rhodes), a Black man who sees himself as the founder of the Ku Klux Klan and who spews vile, racist rhetoric against Blacks, Jews and Catholics. In truth, Trent was a “guinea pig” who was chosen to integrate a Southern university and the racist abuse he received drove him mad. Finally, there’s Boden (Gene Evans), an atomic scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project and the H-Bomb and has been driven into a childlike state over the guilt of his work in creating weapons of mass destruction.
So the mental hospital is a microcosm of the major issues of post-war America (Communism and the Red Scare, civil rights and atomic weapons). Not exactly a subtle metaphor of America as a madhouse, but it is simple enough for those who turned in to see Johnny get attacked by the women in the “Nympho Ward” to get it. (And yes! There’s a “nympho ward.” Thanks for asking.) Fuller also accentuates these stories with dream sequences that are in color, in stark contrast to the black-and-white of the rest of the movie. The dream sequences look like they’ve all come out of pre-existing travel documentaries, but are actually stuff that Fuller shot himself. They are also rather well-done.
Of course, the more time that Johnny spends in the mental ward, the more he loses touch with reality himself. Meanwhile, Cathy gets more and more worried about Johnny’s condition. Can Johnny stay sane long enough to solve the murder and win the Pulitzer?
Shock Corridor really is a low-budget, trashy gem. Sure, you can enjoy it for the scene-chewing acting performances and the lurid stories of strippers, incest and “nympho wards.” But there’s also a well-crafted critique of Cold War America hidden underneath the lurid facade.
The trailer for Shock Corridor emphasized it’s trashy nature as much as possible, including the “nympho ward.” It does shy away from some of the incendiary stuff that Trent says.
Shock Corridor is available on Max (soon back to HBO!) and Criterion, as well as a few other smaller streaming services.
Welcome back to everyone who skips the music and movies.
The acquisition of reliever Ryan Pressly was a controversial one this past offseason. If you were to look at his overall stats, they aren’t very good. Pressly has a 4.13 ERA and just 15 strikeouts (along with 11 walks) over 24 innings.
But of course, that ERA is greatly inflated by Pressly’s outing on May 6 when he absolutely melted down, giving up nine runs in extra innings (eight earned) without retiring a single batter. Since that implosion, Pressly has pitched in 12 games and has only allowed one unearned run. That’s an ERA of 0.00, for those of you bad at math. He’s also struck out ten batters in 11 innings. Tonight he pitched a scoreless seventh inning. Pressley’s stuff also looks better. Andy Martinez at Marquee dot com wrote this about Pressly’s performance tonight.
It will take some time for the season numbers to come down, but he’s been good of late and Monday’s outing was really, really encouraging.
Yes, he allowed a single and a hit by pitch, but it’s the stuff that was encouraging. Five of his eight fastballs in the seventh inning were 94.8-mph or harder. One of them clocked in at 95.4 mph, the hardest he’s thrown this season. He’s been averaging 93 mph this season on his fastball, two ticks slower than what it was from 2021-2023, when he was one of the game’s best relievers.
Now things aren’t all roses for Pressly since that Giants extra-innings disaster. Despite the 0.00 ERA, Pressley has allowed ten hits and three walks. So that’s not exactly dominating. Good, but not dominating.
It also should be mentioned that a lot of Pressly’s appearances came in low-leverage situations with not a lot on the line. Some of them were higher profile (he has three holds) but some of them were pitching against the White Sox in the eighth inning with a seven-run lead or pitching the bottom of the ninth against the Reds with a seven-run lead.
So tonight I’m asking you if you are encouraged by Pressly’s recent performance or if he’s still in your doghouse. What I’m not asking is if you think Pressly should reclaim the closer’s job. That’s Daniel Palencia’s job until he loses it.
What I am asking is if Pressly has rejoined your “circle of trust” where you would put Pressly into a high-leverage situation. Maybe not in the ninth inning, but in the sixth, seventh or eighth inning of a close game.
Poll
Has Ryan Pressly rejoined your “circle of trust”?
0%
Yes. I’d use him in high-leverage situations
(0 votes)
0%
No. Leave him in mop-up work unless no one else is available
(0 votes)
0 votes total
Thank you for stopping by tonight. We’re always glad to see you. Please get home safely. Recycle any cans and bottles. Tip your waitstaff. And join us again tomorrow night for more BCB After Dark.